Six of Crowns
by ibuzoo
Summary: God has never spoken to Tom. Except, possibly, in the language of snakes.


**o.**

Tom decides to stick with hate.

_(love is a burden he cannot bear)_

* * *

**i.**

He was told, over and over again, not to forget that he is a prince, the son of a king and only child, his father victorious and cruel and crowned by golden snakes and thorns, stained with black blood of the dead. He thinks that thorns are pretty when you press them down in soft pink flesh, and he tries to catch the snakes in their garden with his little children fingers - but they always slither away, always too fast.

His father says that snakes are a gift from God, the force above that made his father king, that made him prince and his mother always tells him that God is generous, kind, loving.

He thinks God should give him some snakes too.

* * *

**ii.**

He waits in the garden and it feels like ages, his hands and legs tingling from the lack of movement but he doesn't dare to move at all, stays still like a statue, stoic, and he waits for the blindworms to crawl out of their holes. There's a box in his other hand and Tom is tired of waiting, the sun sets slowly on the horizon when suddenly there's a whole bunch of them. He gathers them, little fingers curling around the greasy tail end, lifting them up from the soil to put them one by one slowly down in his box.

He doesn't run back inside because a prince should lever run, stay composed, beware your manners, walk sedately and the guards smile at him when he enters his mother's room, proud and excited.

He gives them all to her and she laughs, lifts him up and places kisses on his cheeks, that's what a mother should do.

Her smile is his smile.

* * *

**iii.**

But his tears are not her's the moment his father rounds the corner, grabs his arm and yanks him out of the room, drags him by his hair, back to his own chamber and there's a strike in the air, a slap and his cheek burns red, pains.

_(another slap, another slap, another, another)_

He can hear the distant roar of his father's deep baritone voice but Tom doesn't understand a single word, his own sobs and cries too jarring in his ears, the pain soaring, cutting, biting.

He weeps and says it's not fair and his mother enters his room hours later, tells him about whipping boys and how it is better to accept God's punishment like a man.

Tom is six years old. He's not a man, only a little boy and he's not even sure if he's a good one because he prays for a whipping boy that night and each that follows.

He hates the pain but he learns to expect it.

* * *

**iv.**

His father is not God.

He is just a man, anointed by golden snakes.

* * *

**v.**

His mother falls sick and his father tells him that it should have been him.

_(if his mother is his whipping boy he wants it undone)_

* * *

**vi.**

He's twelve and there's a snake coiling around his arm, bright green with a yellow shimmer, eyes deep red and it feels as if it's trying to speak to him, tells him that he'll be king one day, kill your father, take the throne, Tom, Tom, Tom.

He vomits into one of the large urns that stand either side of the dining room doors and never tells anyone.

* * *

**vii.**

_(Tom is thirteen and there's a belt in his father's hands, fists are not enough to punish him anymore)_

* * *

**viii.**

Tom meets Abraxas, tall, slender and hair that shines like a halo around his head, the same cunning and manipulative talent mirroring in his eyes, the son of a minister and it doesn't even need a week for both of them to cling to one another.

Tom speaks and Abraxas follows.

He sees his mother squirm, his father too.

* * *

**ix.**

_(he might like the boy)_

* * *

**x.**

He's sixteen and enrolls in military school, far away from home but never loses the nagging feeling of his father looking right over his shoulder, monitoring every step he takes, the belt ready in his hands.

He learns the art of blackmail and bribery, learns to kiss babies and help elders cross the street in public and the front pages of the newspapers are filled with pictures of the charming boy, the perfect prince.

People love him, a whole nation that kneels for him and he thinks that finally, his father will be proud, will approve, will deem him worthy to wear the crown.

He's seriously mistaken.

_(when he returns home, the belt is already waiting in his fathers hands)_

* * *

**xi.**

God has never spoken to Tom.

Except, possibly, in the language of snakes.

* * *

**xii.**

He meets a girl during an official visit in another kingdom, and he has read this story before, one of his mother's favourites but there are no glass slippers or pumpkins or fairy godmothers, not today.

Her name is Hermione and she's all he ever searched for, hoped for. Dinners, Knees brushing together beneath the table, flushed cheeks, discussions about books and authors and professors and he can pretend that this is normal, no prince, no kingdom.

This is normal.

A tipsy sort of waltz, both toppling onto her bed and he kisses her, deep, hungry, fingers digging around her wrists, pressing her into the mattress so he can taste and devour her skin.

He will never tell her that he loves her.

_(the clock always strikes midnight)_

* * *

**xiii.**

It was simply too naive of him to think his father wouldn't find out, wouldn't find her, would let her be. When he returns to her flat weeks later there's not a single trace of her to be found, not a single proof that she was real.

* * *

**xiv.**

He returns home that night but he doesn't even feel the belt on his back anymore.

Just the rage seething under his skin.

* * *

**xv.**

He's eighteen and he's the son of a king, hates his father, despises his mother.

He's a prince and there are snakes curling on his head.

_(there's blood on his hands too, but he wipes them off, nobody sees, nobody dares)_


End file.
